Size matters. Not just big but enormous, so impossible to ignore that I’ve been stopped on the street to confirm the obvious: ‘Is that really you?’

Yup, that’s me, two storeys tall at the southeast side of Bloor and Bathurst. My portrait, one of seven painted on the walls of the old Loretto College School, is part of a clever sales pitch by B.streets Condos. Buy here and live the classic Annex life! Just like these people! The 28-foot high, 80-foot long mural depicts, among others, a black-hatted guitarist strumming a tune, pretty people in love, and me, an
espresso-sipping flâneur.

I was doing just that early last summer: finishing an afternoon stroll with a stop at the Sam James Coffee Pocket. As I stood outside, demitasse in hand, watching the parade of people pass by, a young woman approached. She asked my permission to use a photo of me for an unnamed project. I was mostly flattered, mildly dubious.

“What kind of project?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Maybe a billboard.”

I assumed she was an art student so any talk of a billboard sounded purely pie-in-the-sky. I signed her waiver and finished my espresso. Two months later, the first phone call came.

By all accounts, B.streets will be a tasteful addition to the Annex. Developer Lindvest Properties Ltd. hired Hariri Pontarini Architects to design condos that stay in tune with the neighbourhood. The result, when it opens in 2014, will be a nine-storey midrise with stepped units, creating an irregular cornice line that breaks up the building’s scale as it rises from the street. It will be dense, with 195 units ranging from 380-square-foot studios ($238,000) to 1,230-square-foot three-bedroom suites ($724,000). Six townhouses, facing the back of the building, will give the rear laneway extra life. Corporate branders L.A. Inc. came up with catchy tag lines — B.Cool, B.Creative, B.In Love — and the idea for the mural. Photographer Tom Ryaboi, well-known in these parts for his vertiginous rooftop pix, took candid snaps of people like me and passed them off to artist Ryan Dineen and the folks at Toronto Muralists. Two weeks and 250 cans of spray paint later, there we were. Our images, those of us who live, work and play in the Annex, were meant “to celebrate the neighbourhood,” Michael Klugmann, Lindvest VP, told the Post’s Lindsay Forsey. “We feel the same types of people will want to live at B.streets.”

When the mural went up last August, I had my 15 minutes of mock-celebrity. Friends phoned. Strangers stared. I’d bike past myself and chuckle. I invited my folks down one evening, without telling them why, and showed off my surprise.

My dad squinted. “It looks like you,” he said.

“It is me.”

He squinted harder. “That wall makes you look fat.”

It’s true. In person, a slight sway in my back can give me a pronounced belly; in paint, it adds an ironic touch of prosperity. I have no clue how affluent the black-hatted guitarist is, or the net worth of those pretty people in love, but let me be clear: The closest I’ll ever get to one of these condos is when I tiptoe into the presentation centre. I am a lifelong renter. I have no credit history. My mortgage application would make even the kindliest banker bust a gut. This isn’t a complaint. I’ve made a conscious choice to live my life a certain way, to eschew money for time — time to write, to stroll, to enjoy an afternoon espresso — and now my lifestyle is being used to sell a condo that I could never afford — because of my lifestyle. This absurdity hit me, one month after the mural went up, like a jolt of caffeine. I waited in the Coffee Pocket while Sam James drew my shot. “Did you see the mural yet?” I asked.

He smiled and said, “They’re using my brand.”

“They’re using my brand, too,” I replied.

This was a joke — even the whisper of marketing-ese makes my teeth hurt — but the underlying truth is like a Kafkaesque tale for our condo-mad city. So now I look ahead, to some point late this year, when enough units are sold. Construction on B.streets will begin and my career as a pitchman will end. The mural will be demolished. That will be something to celebrate: I’ll bring a bottle of bubbly and perhaps a plate of crudités. Friends can join me on the corner. We’ll watch the wrecking ball swing, see it smash my face and my prosperous belly and when I go down, brick by brick, it will be the perfect time to pop the cork.

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